How's this mix?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dark Imagery
  • Start date Start date
I'm afraid there's a lot of work to do on this track. Sounds very flat and tonally bland. Almost everything is just a great big mush of noise, with the exception of the vocals which are more audible than the rest.

The instruments all sound the same and need to be separated out way more as at the moment they are completely indistinguishable from each other. Even the drums are surprisingly hard to pick out, the kick and the snare are just lost in the mush.
Everything needs a lot of eq-ing changes to give the instruments their own space in the mix, could just as easily be too much eq as not enough. If you're compressing most channels, take that off first too. A bit of rebuild needed really.

It also sounds to me like you've been mixing at high volume the whole time. If you turn your monitoring down to a low level, you'll hear what I mean because the mix completely changes.

It's very difficult to tell much more beyond that, and I might be wrong but I would hazard a guess at saying you've compressed the master bus and/or group busses. You need to get rid of all that compression until you've really fixed the mix, as at the moment it's all sounding very flat. I might well be wrong on this though, it's possible the indistinguishable instruments might be the chief culprit. In particular, the drums are what give me that impression, they just sound way too squashed.
 
Hey, thanks for replying.

I'm not really understanding the flat and totally bland comment. Is it that I rolled the guitars off around 10k? I was going for a darker sounding production kinda like Morbid Angel's "Convenant" album, but like I said my ears have become a bit numb and I wanted some outside ears.

Like I said in the original post, I have since reworked a lot of the drum's because I agree with you about them. The kick and snare are compressed a ton but that's a must for their sound. I have slight compression on the drum submix to try and tame some really hot cymbal hits. Would you suggest I remove it?

I switch between loud and quiet monitoring volumes. I agree with you about the drums sounding squashed. They've really given me hell. Would you suggest automating volume on snare for blastbeats vs. single hits, and on kick for doublebass vs. single hits instead of using alot of compression?

Once again, thank you for replying!
 
Wow, I was certain you were mixing too loud.
There's just no definition between instruments. every instrument needs its own space in the mix, which usually means either in the stereo image (with panning) or the frequency spectrum (with eq) and mostly both.
I think the mix needs stripping right down and pretty much starting again. And I say that with regret because you've clearly put work into it already, but it's kind of beyond the point of fixing. Because, short of sitting down with you in front of the mix, it's very difficult to say exactly what it is thats caused the issue.
It could be any or none of a number of things like;
1. you've overdubbed too many guitar parts and they're all interfering with each other and cancelling out a whole chunk of the frequency spectrum,
2. there's loads of reverb on everything so it's just made it all sound muddy
3. everything's massively over-compressed
4. everything's been eq'd too much, and has destroyed the tone of each instrument.

However, I can be helpful in telling you that it's not an automation problem. It's actually impossible to define the instruments. This means it's either a spatial, frequency or dynamics issue. Probably at least two of them I suspect.

Anyone else got any suggestions?
 
Lol, it's probably an issue with the amount of reverb. I have a hard time hearing reverb sometimes and tend to overdo it, on the other hand it is black metal and that's a big part of the sound. There's only 4 guitar tracks, 2 for each guitar. One guitar is panned L-70 and L-90, the other guitar is panned R-70 and R-90. Then during the lead parts guitar 1 goes L-90 R-90, and guitar two goes L-20 R-20. Once again, I appreciate it.
 
Firstly it a pretty good band.....the mix for me is not my fav.....
Yep - way too much compresssion for me but you wouldn't have posted this if you thought so. I'm not familiar with the genre so I can't say if it's "close" or 'far' away from the norm. If you opened up the mix it might not sound like you want anymore.
I guess the questions would be
- are you happy with the mix generally?
- what would you like to hear different?
- where are you trying to change things?
- are you done with this mix in your mind?
 
You're welcome! Maybe try dropping the double-tracks of the guitars down a bit? Don't get rid of them or you'll lose that sound, but might help with the mushiness.
 
Yeah this is dark alright. Dark and lifeless. The drums are a mess in performance and sound. I get it, it's *insert sub-genre* metal, but it still needs to sound good. Just because your musical heroes record in a garage and are happy that way doesn't mean you need to mimic their bad production.

Start all over bro. Get the drums popping like they should. Blastbeats are only effective when they're articulate enough to hear. Otherwise, they sound like mushy ass. Undo everything you've EQ'd and let each instrument breathe and have it's own space.
 
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